Artist Hideout

How to defrag and reclaim life and creativity.

by William Lehman on June 15th, 2007

There is a process of cleaning out your computer called “defragmenting”. It’s a long name for taking all the working files on your computer and “straightening up” so to speak. I have a theory that there’s some truth in this for people too. Our minds can get so wrapped up in getting things done, getting from point A to point B, and making it through life, that we just begin to run slower and slower and slower.

Sure, we have ideas. We have dreams, and we have a plan. But somehow the everyday life things overwhelm the big picture till you are just shooting in macro and never seeing the landscape around you. It’s a pitiful realization when you take the time and finally look around. Over the last few years this has been me (and Becca, my wife). We’ve been rushing to get caught up and instead have been pulled into the undertow. Oh, it’s not been visible to most. In fact, we’ve been more productive in many facets of life, but it’s taken a toll too. Our lives have become fragmented, the colors of our palettes have become dry and routine, and casualties abound in the creativity that was.

Reclaim Life

We started our vacation a few days early this last week. Cory and Kerri (both fellow b5media bloggers) were having a little BBQ to support World Vision. So we went down to Dayton, OH where I found myself in a cemetery. Of course, being me, I didn’t really read the signs or anything. I just drove around and looked at all the interesting headstones. My wife pointed out a sign she happened to see. It had a little sign that said (Wright brothers) with an arrow. The image to the Wright (pun intended) is the Wright Family plot where both Wilbur and Orville Wright are buried. Two men who set out to achieve the supposed impossible task of flying. The veritable icon of a success story is not two men who lived a life of grand achievement, but two men who failed an awful lot before they finally got it right. They reclaimed the failures for a success. Every artist endures failure at some level sometime. Reclaim it. Make it grand, and fail big because you risk big.

I intended to write more here… but I think it will have to be in a new post yet to come. Still on vacation this week. :)

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POSTED IN: Brain Shavings